Trevor Larnach’s August slide has been hard to miss, but the Twins outfielder’s underlying numbers tell a more complicated story.
For most of the season, Larnach has been one of Minnesota’s most productive bats. Through 380 plate appearances, he’s posted career bests in batting average (.266), on-base percentage (.351) and OPS (.769). After spending much of his career as more of a strong-sided platoon option, he took a clear step forward in 2026 and looked like a real middle-of-the-order threat in the first half.
Then the trade deadline arrived, and Larnach suddenly became part of the conversation. Many, including the source here, thought he might be moved to create room for the next wave of outfield talent in the organization, with Walker Jenkins, Emmanuel Rodriguez and Hendry Mendez all looming.
For a moment, that seemed possible. The Twins and Astros reportedly had a deal in place that would have sent Larnach to Houston for reliever Bryan Abreu, but Astros owner Jim Crane vetoed it because he didn’t want to pull talent off Houston’s major league roster during a playoff chase.
Larnach stayed put. Since then, the results have gone south.
In 53 plate appearances in August, he’s hitting .163. He’s striking out more, reaching base less, and after spending most of the summer as the Twins’ leadoff hitter against right-handed pitching, he has been moved into the bottom half of the order.
On the surface, that looks like a hitter who has lost the feel he had earlier in the year. But there’s a big wrinkle here: Larnach may be running into some brutal bad luck.
His contact quality in August has actually been strong, even better than his season-long standard in some areas. He’s averaging 89.3 MPH in exit velocity this month, up from 87.7 MPH for the season.
His 51.4% hard-hit rate is excellent, especially for a player sitting at .163. The approach itself hasn’t changed much, either.
The same kind of contact that helped him succeed earlier in the season is still showing up - it just isn’t dropping in. His BABIP in August is only .171, which is a very low number for someone hitting the ball that hard.
That said, this isn’t all something you can chalk up to bad breaks. The strikeouts and the lack of on-base production are still real issues, and over time, ugly results can point to something deeper. But when a hitter is barreling the ball better than usual and the hits still aren’t coming, panic doesn’t make much sense either.
There is also one specific adjustment opponents seem to be making. The pitch Larnach has had the most trouble with this season is the split-finger.
He has whiffed on half of his swings against splitters, and offspeed pitches overall have been a problem in 2026. In August, though, pitchers have leaned into that weakness even more.
Larnach is seeing splitters at more than twice the rate he saw them during the rest of the season. Splitters have made up 13.3% of the pitches he has faced this month, compared with about 4.5% from May through July, when he was arguably at his best.
That creates a different kind of test. If pitchers know a hitter struggles against a certain pitch, they have every reason to keep going back to it. So Larnach isn’t just waiting on a few more balls to find grass; he has to show he can handle the adjustment.
That could mean taking more pitches below the zone, reading the splitter earlier, or simply making more consistent contact when it shows up. However it comes, that adjustment matters.
The overall foundation is still there. He’s still hitting the ball hard.
The season-long production is still far better than anything he has done over a full season before.
So while August has been rough, it’s probably too soon to say Larnach has fallen all the way back to the version of himself that Twins fans knew earlier in his career. Some of this is bad luck.
Some of it is a real pitch-specific challenge. And for a Minnesota team trying to stay in the postseason mix, getting Larnach back on track could be a major boost.
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